Porridge

ART – Zoe Paterson

Zoe Paterson is an artist and Political Science graduate living in Birmingham. Horror stories are a big influence in her work, which aims to be simultaneously kitsch and unsettling. Her artistic influences include Francis Bacon, Dave McKean and all of the Goosebumps book covers. When she’s not painting, you’ll find her programming, skating, or learning…

ONE POEM – Aimee S. Green

Image: Wassily Kandinsky – Cossacks (1910) Aimee S. Green is an MA student currently living in Birmingham. Aside from working on a novel for her dissertation, she adores experimenting with short story forms and playing with perspective. She shares her poetry and prose on her blog, at https://aimeegreenwriter.wordpress.com/ Bombs Run. Like the bustling of a…

What does feminist dating look like? — Jennifer Maidment

Jennifer Maidment is an intersectional feminist who’s very active within her local community and also very single, so figured she’d would write about her experience/struggles. She’s an aspiring writer and is currently on leave from studying international law as an undergraduate at University of Birmingham. What does feminist dating look like? Meet Jennifer, a Gemini,…

THREE POEMS – Shirley Jones-Luke

Image: JACK WHITTEN, “Black Monolith, II: Homage To Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man,” 1994 (acrylic and mixed media on canvas: molasses, copper, salt, coal ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell, razor blade). | © Jack Whitten, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer from Boston, Mass. She…

POETRY – Ian C Smith

Image: English novelist Evelyn Waugh by Henry Lamb, 1930 Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in Antipodes, Australian Poetry Journal, Critical Survey, Live Encounters, Prole, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two-Thirds North. His seventh book is ‘wonder sadness madness joy’, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakesarea of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania….

The Object as Concept: Exploring the Role of Materiality in Yoko Ono’s ‘The Riverbed’— Margaryta Golovchenko

Image: Yoko Ono – Mend Piece, 2018 via The Gardiner Museum Margaryta Golovchenko is an undergrad student at the University of Toronto, an editor for Poached Hare, and a book reviewer for Alternating Current. Her work has appeared in publications such as Acta Victoriana, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Contemporary Verse 2, Metatron, and others. She is also the author of…

TWO POEMS – Antonia Cundy

Image: Aaron Burden on Unsplash Antonia Cundy is an postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge, studying on an MPhil in American Literature. She has written (poetry and prose) for The Financial Times, The Economist, and The Oxonian Review, amongst others. Her work can be found at www.antoniacundy.com. The Milkman A skin had formed over her hot chocolate, creasing clinging off her spoon – grandmother’s…

POETRY – Abigail Pearson

Image by impressionist painter, Berthe Morisot. Abigail Pearson is 22 year old writer and poet from Eugene, Oregon. She is the co-founder of Cauldron Anthology, a literary magazine about the wild feminine that draws from mythology. She writes about everything from queer love, to escaping from a cult and my adorable black cat. Her poetry…

ONE POEM – Dan Hogan

Image: Joan Miró – Painting (1927) Dan Hogan is a writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Lifted Brow, Scum Mag, Sydney Morning Herald, and Overland, among others. They are the Program Officer at Writing NSW, and a teacher. Dan is also the director of the independent literary organisation, Subbed In. They tweet @packetofchips…

TWO POEMS – Joe Shaw

Joe Shaw is a recent BA Creative Writing graduate from York St. John University. A curator at heart; he likes to explore the relationship between poetry and visual art practices. Image: Hugh Auchincloss Steers, 1995 Cover image: Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, The Dream, 1883 [dreams are more radical than our reality.] – Guillermo Gómez Peña i…

ILLUSTRATIONS – Ian Cooke-Tapia

Ian Cooke-Tapia is a Panama-born multidisciplinary storyteller, illustrator, and entrepreneur. His practice focuses on intradisciplinary subject matter as means to explore the fluidity of the rules of our reality, and ignored social narratives. See more of his work here. and find him on twitter and Instagram. An Incomplete Timeline of Isthmian Identit(y/ies) Whichever narrative is…

Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets: challenging the virgin/whore dichotomy on ITV2’s Love Island

Milly Morris likes Foucault and feminism. She is currently chasing a PhD in political science at the University of Birmingham. She is a runner, as well as a lover of chickpeas and Game of Thrones. This essay was originally published on her website during the 2017 season of Love Island. Featured image: Clem Onojeghuo at Unsplash A foreword…

FOUR ARTWORKS – Jacob Courtney

Jacob Courtney is an illustrator currently based in Cardiff. He recently graduated from Cardiff School of Art and Design where he studied BA (Hons) Illustration. His work aims to depict atmospheric and immersive scenes. He is interested in the traces of life found in locations with no people present, and the stories those places tell. This…

ONE POEM – Carl Boon

Image: ‘PARADISE’ © Cecilia Paredes. Courtesy of Galería Blanca Berlin and Photo London Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American…

ONE POEM – Keith Moul

Image: ‘Wet Sand’ by Annie Soudain. See more of her work here. Keith Moul’s poems and photos are published widely. Finishing Line Press released a chap called ‘The Future as a Picnic Lunch’ in 2015. Aldrich Press published ‘Naked Among Possibilities’ in 2016; Finishing Line Press released ‘Investment in Idolatry’ in 2017. Misty Circumlocution Canada…

ONE POEM – Anjali Bhavan

Image via Oleg Magni on Pexels Anjali Bhavan is a college student in New Delhi. She likes to write, watch movies, read poems and code, and believes the world to be a far more interesting place that she knows. Inanna Inanna crawls out of the brown of my skin, she emerges from my restlessness and…

TWO POEMS – Wanda Deglane

Image by Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-1998), Danish surrealist painter Wanda Deglane is a psychology/family & human development student at Arizona State University. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming on Dodging the Rain, Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. She writes to survive. Wanda is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants, and lives with her giant…

ONE POEM – Faith Rhiannon Clarke

Image: Lawrence Alma-Tadema – The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) Faith Rhiannon Clarke is a Journalism and English Literature graduate based in Cardiff. She is an aspiring International Journalist, especially interested in Middle Eastern affairs and conflict. However, she also has an innate love for literature, and her spare time is spent giving her undivided attention…

SHORT STORY – John Herbert

John Herbert is an English teacher from Brighton, UK, holds a PhD in modernist fiction from the University of Birmingham, and is an alumnus of New Writing South’s Creative Writing Programme. He was Highly Commended for the 2017 Brighton Prize for short fiction and will appear in their anthology this year. In 2018 his work has also…

The Haunted Present: Using the Past as an Emotional Context – Kat Hausler

Photo by Daniel Wander on Pexels Kat Hausler is a graduate of New York University and Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was the recipient of a Baumeister Fellowship. Her debut novel Retrograde was recently published by Meerkat Press. She writes and translates in Berlin. The Haunted Present: Using the Past as an Emotional Context In James…

TWO POEMS – Joshua Teo

Image: Mattia Serrani on Unsplash Joshua Teo is an undergraduate student of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He writes for fun and hopes to write something beautiful one day. Ryū-ha The fish does not dream of water. It dreams of legs to walk the earth Or feathered wings to ride the skies; It dreams…

TWO POEMS – Damon Moore

Image: Henri Matisse – Horse, Rider and Clown (Le cheval, l’écuyère et le clown) from Jazz (1947) Damon Moore runs an arts project in Frome, Somerset. He has a particular interest in the narrative style but his short-form poetry has found a home in RAUM, The Literateur, Eyot and Forage amongst others. He is travelling somewhere in Europe…

ONE POEM – Katie Paterson

Image: Gustav Klimt, Bauernhaus mit Birken, 1900 Katie is an actor and writer currently training on the MA Acting course at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. She has performed her poetry at Redgates Theatre, Arcola, and once memorably at Metropolis Strip Club. She is currently developing her solo show ‘Minor Disruptions’. Last Words ‘The birch leaves,…

THREE POEMS – Anne Gill

Anne Gill is a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, UK and is due to study her MA at Newcastle University next year. She was shortlisted for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry 2018 and was part of the winning slam team at UniSlam 2018. She has performed at events in both the UK and…

Meaning-making in Literature and Life: an Introduction to Existentialism – Elizabeth Ruth Deyro

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels Elizabeth Ruth Deyro is a Filipina writer and editor with a BA in Communication Arts from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She is the Founding Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of The Brown Orient and the Fiction Editor of Rag Queen Periodical. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Moonchild…

TWO POEMS – Seán Kennedy

Seán Kennedy is a twenty-two-year-old writer living in Co. Kildare. Since finishing an MA in Irish Literature and Culture at Maynooth University last summer, he has turned to writing poetry in an effort to pass the time productively, or at least creatively. His poem “Brothers of Charity” appeared in online journal Dodging the Rain in March 2018….

ONE POEM – John Bartlett

Image: Ana Mendieta – Silueta de Cohetes (1976) John Bartlett lives on the southern coast of Australia and is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories and an e-book collection of his non-fiction. His poetry has been published in a number of online journals. He blogs regularly at: http://beyondtheestuary.com/ Plastic World It hardly matters there’s a…

PHOTOGRAPHY – Célia Schouteden

Célia Schouteden is a twenty-five year old artist based in Belgium. She’s currently studying at her hometown university, in Liège, to become a clinical psychologist. Since 2016, she has explored herself through analog photography which she’s using as a therapy to help herself with her borderline personality & cyclothymic disorders. She would love to help…

TWO POEMS – Jac Shortland

Jac Shortland is a Cork woman. Her poetry has been published in a diversity of journals and anthologies, including Antiphon, Into the Void, The Cannon’s Mouth, Silhouette Press, A New Ulster and Causeway Cabhsair. She has been long listed for North West Words Poetry 2016 and Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2017…

THREE POEMS – Gráinne Daly

Image: Helen Frankenthaler – Brown Moons, 1961 Gráinne Daly holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCD. Shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize, Maeve Binchy UCD Award and winner of Greywood Arts Prize 2017, her work has been published in a number of publications, including Southword Magazine and Ogham Stone Journal. She has completed…

Cat people – Antonia Cundy

Antonia Cundy is an postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge, studying on an MPhil in American Literature. She has written (poetry and prose) for The Financial Times, The Economist, and The Oxonian Review, amongst others. Her work can be found at www.antoniacundy.com. Image: paul morris on Unsplash Cat People On 11th December 2017, The New Yorker published Kristen Roupenian’s short story, ‘Cat Person’,…

SHORT STORY – Anita Goveas

Anita Goveas is British-Asian, based in London, and is fueled by strong coffee and paneer jalfrezi. She was first published in the 2016 London Short Story Prize anthology, and most recently in former cactus, Litro, New Flash Fiction Review, Porridge, and Longleaf Review. She tweets erratically @coffeeandpaneer Image: James Pond on Unsplash Recursion Adhira watched the dog chase itself again….

ONE POEM – Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

Image: Mary Kessell – Still Life Under the Sea (1960) © The estate of Mary Kessell Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been published in web magazines and print anthologies. These include Fiction on the Web, Literally Stories, Alliterati, Stepaway, Poets Speak (whilst they still can), Three Drops…

SHORT STORY – Meagan Masterman

Image: Dorothea Lange – Clausen Child and Mother c. 1930 via the MOMA Meagan Masterman is a writer from Maine, living in Massachusetts. Her work can be found in Funhouse Magazine, Unbroken Journal, and Maudlin House. She co-edits Reality Hands. Find her online, where she usually is @meaganmasterman Who you are, Alicia Callahan I’ve got a…

POETRY – Priyanka Sacheti

Priyanka Sacheti is a writer based in Bangalore, India. Priyanka previously lived in Sultanate of Oman, United Kingdom, and United States. She has been published in numerous publications with a special focus on art, gender, diaspora, and identity and is presently an editor at Mashallah News. Her literary work has appeared in Berfrois, The Lunchticket, and Jaggery Lit and two of her…

ONE POEM – Nora Selmani

Image: Dhimitër Vangjeli – The village of Prodan near the Greek border, birthplace of the photographer. Kolonja, Albania via albanianphotography.net Nora Selmani lives in London and works in academic publishing. She is also co-editor of Porridge, and a part-time witch interested in gender and diaspora. Her work has appeared in Peach Mag, O GOCE, OCCULUM, and Sea Foam amongst others. She…

FLASH FICTION – J.A. Pak

Image: elin o’Hara slavick. J.A. Pak’s writing has been published in a variety of publications, including 7×7, Unbroken Journal, Joyland, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Luna Luna and Atticus Review. For more work, take a look here. Concentric In mid dream, mid journey, there’s a barrier we must cross, flat and vast like an ocean. We’re told the barrier is a monster….

Air transport, carbon emissions, and capitalism – Muntazir Jaffer

Image: Fighting for Air, Amazing Productions, 2018 Muntazir Jaffer is a boutique cosmetics designer with a focus on sustainability in personal care. After graduating with from the University of Birmingham with a MEng in Chemical Engineering, he was baffled by the minimal adoption of green technology across the UK and now rants continuously about sustainable…

SHORT STORY: LOBSTER TAILS – Georgia Tindale

Georgia Tindale is an assistant editor working in Amsterdam and co-editor of Porridge Magazine. Her primary interests include poetry, science writing, health and society, history, religion and postcolonial studies. Her poems have been published and are upcoming in Sunlight Press and Laurel Magazine. She tweets @tindale_georgia. Lobster Tails Polunsky Unit If you had to choose the last meal you…

Edward Hopper and the Suspension of Loneliness in Time – Umang Kalra

Image: Edward Hopper – Room in New York (1932) via edwardhopper.net Umang Kalra’s work appears or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, VAYAVYA, Moonchild Magazine, Vagabond City, and others. She is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in History from Trinity College, Dublin, and has previously been mentored in poetry by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. Edward…

ONE POEM – Kwan Ann Tan

Image: Nancy Spero – Lovers (1962) © Estate of Nancy Spero. DACS, London/VAGA, New York 2018 Kwan Ann Tan is a 19 year old Malaysian currently studying at Oxford University. Her work has been featured in places such as Hypertrophic Literary and Half Mystic, and she also serves as the Roots Fiction Editor at Rambutan Literary….

POETRY REVIEW: straya by Paul Summers – Malcolm St Hill

Malcolm St Hill lives in Newcastle, Australia and is a poet, reviewer and independent researcher focused on the literary memory of the Great War, particularly the work of Australian soldier-poets. This is a modified version of a review which appeared in Rochford Street Review in December 2017. straya by Paul Summers (Smokestack Books, 2017) The term…

PHOTOGRAPHY – Deborah Sibbald

Deborah Sibbald lives in London where she works as a social worker for the NHS. She studied photography at John Cass and writes poetry, some of which has begun to appear in various publications. These photographs are a few of many from several series of ” involuntary paintings” taken whilst walking in London.

The Fight for Empowerment – ART REVIEW by Lauren Holder

Featured image credit: Shepard Fairey, 2007, Power and Equality, screenprint Lauren Holder is a recent Psychology graduate from the University of Birmingham. Currently, she is training with the NHS to become a mental health social worker alongside completing a masters in Social Work through the University of York. 1963, the height of the revolutionary civil rights…

To what extent do experiences of conception and/or infertility challenge mind/body dualism? – Frances Tuoriniemi

Image: Keith Haring – Fertility, 1983 Frances Tuoriniemi is a final year English and Creative Writing undergraduate student at the University of Birmingham, who will be continuing on to study an MA in Writing at Warwick next year. They particularly enjoy work that plays with color and feels alive, work that moves and shifts to…